This is the third anniversary that we have run the SS Paul Hamilton tragedy, the largest loss of life on a Liberty Ship during WWII.

Each year a few more families of the 580 killed find the the article and contact me, most have know nothing but that date their ancestor was killed.

Bob Jones widow Helen passed on all the the archival material they dug out after the 50 year classification had run out. I was in the unique position of course to publish it here, and will every year as we continue to find more and more families.

The surprise this year was to have the radio operator, Wayne Witt Bates, on the USS Mosley contact me with the startling revelation that when the torpedo bombers were coming in on a bow attack they received a message of “Friendly Planes…Do not fire.”This first wave went by the Mosley unmolested and got the Paul Hamilton…the fortune of war.But in all the post action reports, this key radio message ‘fell through the cracks’.

So we say thanks to Al Gore for inventing the Internet, without which we would never have been able to do any of this. It is all amazing teamwork from people who care, and that is a set up for a favor I want to ask you all. We have been posting queries on surname genealogy forums fishing to find more families of the 580 men, but the initial test got no bites. The KIA link has all the names in alphabetical order. If any of you readers have any of these surnames among your family let’s see if we can let more of these families know what really happened, and why.